It was during a visit to Bacan Island in 1859 that Alfred Russell Wallace
first observed a female of Ornithoptera croesus. It took, however, as
much as three months before he finally managed to catch the first specimen, a
male. His triumph was a direct result of his identification of shrubs with
yellow flowers, Mussaenda, to be attractive to the imagoes of
croesus.

Mr. Wallace's accounts of his capture is well known and has been published
again later by several authors:

"During my first walk into the forest, I had seen sitting on a leaf out of
reach, an immense butterfly of a dark colour marked with white and yellow. I
could not capture it as it flew away high up in the forest, but I at once saw
that it was a female of a new species of Ornithoptera, the pride of the
Eastern Tropics. I was very eager to get it and to find the male, which in this
genus is always of extreme beauty. During the two succeeding months I only saw
it once again, and shortly afterwards I saw the male flying high in the air at
the mining village. I had begun to despair of ever getting a specimen, as it
seemed so rare and wild; till one day, about the beginning of January, I found a
beautiful shrub with large leafy bracts and yellow flowers, a species of
Mussaenda, and saw one of these noble creatures hovering over it, but it
was too quick for me and flew away. The next day I went again to the same shrub
and succeeding in catching a female, and the day after a fine male. I found it
to be as I had expected, a perfectly new and most magnificent species, and one
of the most gorgeously butterflies in the world. Fine specimens of the male are
more than seven inches across the wings, which are velvety black and fiery
orange, the latter colour replacing the green of the allied species. The beauty
and brilliance of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can
understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On
taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat
violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than
I have done when in apprehension of immediate death!

I had decided to return to Ternate in a week or two, but this grand capture
determined me to stay until obtained a good series of this new butterfly which I
have since named Ornithoptera croesus.

I thus was able to bring away with me more than a hundred of both sexes,
including perhaps twenty very fine males, though not more than five or six that
were absolutely perfect".

O. croesus is a low-land species, occurring in swamps and wet places.
According to Smiet (1982) as much as 90% of all forests in the northern and
central Moluccas was under concession to large-scale commercial logging
operations. Additional threats to croesus comes from large-scale use of
insecticides against mosquitoes.

Although it is believed that croesus - at least subspecies
croesus and lydius - are more numerous in nature than what early
collectors reported, there is no doubt that croesus is under a continued
threat from human activities.

TIP:To view the images of this
species, click on the name of the species.To go direct to the imagesof a specific subspecies, click on the name of the
subspecies.To go direct to the image of a specific
form,click on the name of the
form.

Crösus/Kroisos was a wealthy mythological king (ref:
croesus' gold spots).

Notes:

The taxon sananaensis was described as
a new ssp from Sanana Is. based on a single

specimen (a female). It has
always been regarded as a doubtful description, as no other specimens of
croesus have been found in Sanana Is. and no Ornithoptera
has ever been found West of Weber's line. In his Revision of the Genus
Ornithoptera : 56, Mr Gilles Deslisle explains the true story
behind the holotype. According to entomologist Greg Watson, the origin of the specimen
was based on a joke by a commercial dealer (for the whole story, see
Deslisle's paper).